Part 21 (1/2)
”Sebastian-”
He cut her short with his lips, taking her mouth in an almost-bruising kiss. ”We're okay,” he said between kisses as he kicked the door closed behind him.
”You could have been-”
”So could you.” At that, she broke away from him, her breathing rough and the tears finally spilling down her face.
”Sebastian, don't do this,” she said, fists clenched at her sides and her body tight.
”Do what?” he challenged, walking toward her, his arms spread wide.
Melissa retreated until she could go no farther. ”Save me. I don't need to be saved.”
Sebastian stopped short of trapping her against the wall. He laid a hand over the middle of his chest and said, ”So what if somewhere in this geek's heart there was a man who needed to be a hero? Is that so bad?”
Her tears had stopped, but her tone was hard enough to cut gla.s.s. ”I should have handled it.”
Sebastian smiled. ”I suspect you could have kicked his a.s.s. But what you're upset about has nothing to do with that and everything to do with the head trip your parents laid on you.”
”This isn't about them.” She slipped through the opening he'd left for her, striding quickly through the door to her room.
Sebastian grabbed the door, keeping her from shutting it. ”But it is, Melissa. You're afraid of being saved from yourself. Of admitting that maybe, just maybe, you're someone that I truly care about. That scares the s.h.i.+t out of you.”
Melissa battled with the door, but Sebastian's grip was too firm. The door was going nowhere. So she gave up the battle and stalked into her room. ”Thank you, Dr. Laura. And what about you?”
Sebastian followed her in, closing the door just in case Ryder or Diana came home. He wanted privacy for this little discussion.
”Me? What about me?”
Facing him, Melissa tucked her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes. ”When I asked you that night if you needed to be saved, don't you think I saw what you thought?”
Shrugging, he had to admit she had likely read him right. ”You probably did, only things have changed, amor.”
She slashed a hand through the air to silence him. ”And this miraculous thing-”
”Is that you made it possible for me to believe in me. To believe that someone as special as you could actually care about someone like me,” he said earnestly, laying himself open to her.
His honesty was enough to defuse the situation. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, she laid a hand on the middle of his chest. In a tone that bordered on disbelieving, she said, ”Someone like you? Don't you see what you are? How caring and loving and brave? I know you probably don't want to hear that last part-”
Covering her hand with his, he smiled and said, ”Actually I do. Especially coming from you.”
Melissa couldn't stop the grin that came to her face. He made it so hard to stay angry. So hard to stop wanting him in her life. But doubt lingered still. ”Why?” This time, his smile was tender. He cradled her cheek, his palm rough against her skin. ”Because you're the world to me, Melissa.
You've made me whole and without you...”
”This is just too difficult, Sebastian.” Her voice was rough with the emotion she was holding back.
”Funny thing to hear from you. I've watched you deal with a sliced-up Ryder and a knife-wielding junkie who's OD'd.”
She shook her head. ”Easy to deal with because...” She stopped, afraid for a moment of revealing too much.
”Because what?” he asked. There was no avoiding him or the love that was so plainly obvious in his gaze.
”They don't reach me in here,” she replied, motioning with her hand to the spot right above her heart. ”Deep in here where the hurt is. Where I'm afraid of so many things.”
”Of me?” he asked.
Surprisingly, she knew at that moment that it wasn't him she feared, but everything else around her. He had become her stability.
Her rock in a sea of the surreal madness that was her life since she'd learned she'd been called to be Ryder's companion.
”Never you,” she replied.
He pulled her into his arms and held her tight. She wrapped her arms around him and held him just as fiercely.
When they finally broke apart, he tentatively met her lips with his, as if uncertain of this new place in their relations.h.i.+p.
She returned the kiss, but couldn't hold back. He meant too much to her and she wanted him to know it.
Opening her mouth, she became the aggressor, empowered by his belief in her. He responded, meeting every kiss and caress.
Undressing her with a haste that matched her own.
This time, it was she who backed him to the bed until he could go no farther, urged him onto its surface where she became his lover in ways she hadn't been before, emboldened by his pa.s.sion for her.
As she took him inside her, she watched his face. Marvelled at the love that shone there and the happiness. He was grinning that devilishly boyish grin when he wasn't busy elsewhere with that wonderful mouth. And she was grinning back when she wasn't urging him on with soft cries as she reached her climax.
She was shaking, almost weak, when he reversed their positions and paused for a moment, gazing down at her, totally serious. ”I love you. Forever, Melissa.”
Melissa cradled his face in her hands and lifted herself up to kiss him. After, she braced her forehead against his and said, ”I love you, too, Sebastian. And I won't let anything get in the way of us.”
His answer was a rough groan and the powerful surge of his body as he drove into her. She slipped her hands to his shoulders, gripped them as she answered the call of his body and of his heart.
When it was over, she lay cradled in his arms, secure for the first time in her life that she was totally loved for who she was.
That she was finally happy.
Chapter 28.
S he was in love. Deeply and truly in love.That could be the only possible explanation for why she was watching him sleep rather than getting in the shower and preparing for another day at the hospital.
He was sprawled indolently on top of the covers.
She'd discovered that from their many nights together. He was an on-top-of-the-covers kind of guy, when he wasn't busy beneath them with her.